IMPALIN HERSELF

A few flops short of a bag of compost!

It’s a tough time to be a far-right loony. First the Soviet Union collapsed and then Fidel Castro retired to his deathbed. That pretty much removed communism from the old bag of scare tactics. Every day newspapers are folding like insomniac origami artists, so it’s hard to blame the “liberal media” for much of anything. Radical jihadists scare everyone so there’s no political traction there, and the beloved “private sector” turns out to be more riddled with pirates than the coast of Somalia. You can always blame homosexuals, but the sky hasn’t fallen in the states that have legalized gay and lesbian marriage. Religion? Church attendance is falling faster than clerical trousers, so that one’s starting to sour. So what’s a stark raving lunatic like Sarah Palin to do when she bails out as Alaska governor? Why blame the financial bailout, Hollywood, and television of course!

If any doubt remained that Sarah is a few cow flops short of a full bag of compost her bizarre press conference when leaving the Alaskan State House should dispel doubts. Palin didn’t have the grace or intelligence to leave the governorship quietly. In one breath she warned of vague forces “hell bent on tearing down our nation,” and in the next she admonished that “government largess … doesn’t come free.” Then she told everyone not to pick on the family of the incoming governor and followed it by blaming television for falsifying things about herself. Her actual words were, “How about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit making things up?” What the hell!!??? Will someone please explain to Palin what a nonsequitur is?

But let me dignify her comments with more consideration than they had or deserve. Creating faceless enemies is a classic McCarthyite tactic. Who are those “hellbent on tearing down the nation?” Not television or Hollywood; both depend on a healthy economy. Not those whose jobs have been saved by government bailout money. It would, however, be a pretty good description of the principals who engaged in the reckless patterns of deindustrialization, capital flight, and Wall Street speculation that made government largess necessary. And it might also apply to, say, a politician with twenty pending ethics violations. Or are those charges just a Hollywood script invented to denigrate the military? Let’s call this rant what it is—Palin’s attempt to scapegoat others for her own misdeeds and ineptitude.

Can there be any doubt that Sarah Palin isn’t fit to run a fried dough stand let alone the United States? Palin wants to blame television for her woes, but I say if you’re not tough enough to take on Tina Fey you should shut up and go away. In that order.--LV